“Standing on business” is a very Gen-Z internet term, but it has an age-old meaning. To stand on business is to stand by your morals, not cave your opinions to the whims of others and the trends. It’s a respectable trait, and one Bess Freedman—CEO of Brown Harris Stevens—emulates.
As an icon of the industry, Freedman earned her place as a Luminary amongst RISMedia’s 2026 Real Estate Newsmakers for her unwavering, outspoken work advocating for transparency and equity in real estate through supporting the National Association of Realtors’® Clear Cooperation Policy. She critiqued private listing networks and their effect on transparency through high-profile opinion pieces in the news and national broadcasts on CNBC and Bloomberg, and through spearheading the #LetsBeClear campaign.
Freedman’s notable influence across the industry led to her giving the opening keynote at RISMedia’s 37th Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange in Washington, D.C.
In this entry of our Newsmakers Spotlight series, Freedman breaks down her thoughts on the ever-trending private listing debate, her connection to the financial sphere, her ideals and her advice and for rising to levels of success like hers in real estate.
Claudia Larsen: You have been outspoken on your critique of private listing networks, saying that they undermine market transparency and seller equity. Can you elaborate on this position and what you feel the better path is?
Bess Freedman: Well, I have been outspoken about it. Sometimes I feel like it’s like a broken record saying the same things over and over, but Warren Buffet was famous for saying “Price is what you pay and value is what you get.” I think it’s important for people to know what they’re getting, and for information to be out there and transparent. I think limiting access to information and restricting who can see and compete for our properties is unhealthy for the market overall.
What concerns me the most—and I talked to a lot of the executives at other firms about this—is that people rely on us to be their trusted advisors. If you work in finance or you’re a lawyer or you’re a teacher or whatever you do, you’re not fluent with how it works, so you hire somebody to educate you. If you hire somebody and they give you bad information, you can go down a path that is not going to suit your best interest. That’s what concerns me: that trust and opaqueness is the new discussion today, because people are getting bad information and it’s unclear. They don’t know who to believe or what to listen to.
The other thing that concerns me the most about this sort of new three-phase marketing approach (the private listing network, the “Coming Soon” listings). No, you put your home on the market to give it maximum exposure. You show it, you market it, you price it right, and you get a great price. That’s how the market works. If a seller wants discretion, we do that too, but that is such an exception to the rule. You wouldn’t have a whole network of people like that because they don’t exist unless you manufacture them, which is what is being done. They’re creating that demand by telling people, “Here, do a private listing network.” They’re trying to encourage people to do it. They’re promoting it. If there’s never been the demand, they created the demand by dictating the narrative. Now we’re here to try to sort it out, but I don’t need a one, two, three marketing approach. I just tell everybody how it works, how our market works. You put it on the market, you price it right, you get great photos, you show it when people want to see it, and you will get yourself a good price if it’s priced right. If you don’t do that, if you overprice it, it’s going to linger. Then obviously days on market, it’s important information. You should not be able to hide that info.
This is where I’m definitely at odds with (Compass CEO) Robert Reffkin about days on market. As a fiduciary of sellers, of course I get it, it hurts their value. But, what about the other side of the equation when you’re a buyer? Do buyers have rights? That seller will be a buyer one day. Will they want to know days on market? Will they want to know price changes? I’m sure they will. I think you have to look at the entire pie. You can’t just look at the piece you’re working on.
We used to say in law school—Keep it simple, stupid. Keep it simple, keep it straight. You just want people to have the information, so they can make decisions based on honest information. If you hide things like metrics of days on market, or if you had a price reduction, you’re not letting consumers make educated choices. I feel like that’s such a huge disservice to our market. Yes, for sellers, days on market hurts you. That’s why you should price it right out of the gate and put it on the full market. Don’t fiddle around with these coming soon, private listing networks—put it on the market.That’s what we do. I guess I’m overly frustrated with how complicated people have made things. There’s so many other challenges just in life to have to deal with this on top of it is just frustrating.
I guess what I’m saying to agents is to take this as an opportunity to lean into full conversations with your buyers and sellers—educate them. When you have things like this happening, it’s like a new discussion, you can take that time to say, “Hey, this is what one company’s doing. Let me explain it to you. Let me show you how it works.” It’s time for you to educate people. We can also use this as a benefit because if people ask, we can say, “Hey, interesting that you asked. Let me explain to you how it works.” That’s what I have encouraged our execs and our agents to do.
CL: Your Newsmakers profile notes you are the only residential real estate executive appointed to CNBC’s Inside Wealth Advisory Board. How does being so involved and informed in the financial sphere help to position you and Brown Harris Stevens for success?
BF: Obviously housing is deeply connected to broader financial trends, interest rates, wealth migration, tax policy and economic cycles. All of those things are connected. I think serving on the board provides a big picture perspective on how those forces are shaping real estate markets across the country. I also think that insight sort of guides us—me, our agents, our clients—and gives us context about what the market is doing and why. It helps to reinforce Brown Harris Stevens. We’re a privately held firm, one of the last standing that we lead with knowledge and thoughtful market analysis. We do have a chief economist here at Brown Harris Stevens. His name is Greg Heim. We really like to lean into substance and get details and information and look at what’s going on and trends and see if that can help to inform us.
But, the market is tricky because it’s psychological—it’s based on people’s behavior. Right now the volatility is obviously impacting how people are feeling. It’s just like when COVID hit, it impacted how people responded in the market, the stock market, the housing market, all of those things. I think it’s good to be in touch with people who do many things and get insight from them so that we can share. I’ll be at a dinner and they’ll ask things like, “What’s going on in the housing market,” and I’ll say, “Well, what’s going on in the private wealth market?” It’s interesting just to have that intel and share what’s going on, because things are always changing.
CL: 2026 is expected to be a large year of transition to normalcy for the housing market. How are you preparing Brown Harris Stevens to lead the market in the event of stabilization and a potential boom in activity?
BF: The real estate market is so cyclical. We have to really be prepared during these transitional periods. We’re doing things like investing in our agents through training and resources so that they’re prepared to work with their clients. Our technology is super important to what the agents are doing, so they can get information to their clients as fast or as slow as they want. Marketing is also such a big piece of what we do, because as real estate professionals, if they’re selling homes, it’s important how they’re exposing those homes—who they’re reaching, who they’re bringing in to show the property to, that sort of thing. Getting the widest possible audience. We just launched a new website, which is great. There’s still tweaks, we’re still fixing it, but it’s much faster, it’s got more information, I think it’s a smoother website than we had before and we’re getting good feedback about it.
One of the things, I can’t take credit for it. My Chief Marketing Officer has spearheaded a podcast network, a content network. A lot of our agents do these podcasts, they interview other agents, lawyers, professionals, economists, all those things, and that has been proven to be very successful. Our chief economist, Greg Heim, also does a podcast, which I think is our number one podcast. That’s a positive thing. Podcasting is where it’s at, because you can walk and listen and you can get information. I think we’re one of the few firms that has that, which is why our agents love it, and our clients are really responding well to that.
I think as far as the market goes, our goal is to make sure that if activity accelerates—which I hope it does in the spring market, I don’t know that that will be the case—I’m cautiously optimistic that our agents are ready to take advantage of it. I’m getting mixed information from agents—some are super busy selling things and feeling good and others are telling me they have no activity. It’s a mixed bag, and I don’t know if we’re going to have a strong spring selling season. If you had asked me maybe three months ago, I would have probably predicted yes, but now I’m sort of more on the fence about it. I hope that we do, but you saw that rates jump back up again and there’s volatility in the market right now because with all the geopolitical stuff, it has an impact on people making decisions. We’ll have to see. I think it’s day to day, but as we know with housing, people have to buy and sell regardless of what’s going on in the world. We will continue that part of the process no matter what. It may be the discretionary that is put on hold for a bit if people are concerned, but we’re still seeing big spending. So, I’m not saying it started, I’m just saying I’m being cautious about what will be. I mean, nobody can sit here and say it’s going to be this or it’s going to be that, because we don’t know. We’re all part of this moving, living thing and there’s change—the one constant is change. We’ll see what happens. I remain optimistic and I know that we still have to serve our markets and people are still buying and selling because it’s serving their circumstances, right?
CL: Your profile also says you focus on facts over fear-mongering. Can you expand on that ideal?
BF: I feel like it’s just almost like our news today. It loves super exaggerated headlines. It’s either the far left or the far right. The middle of the road, everyday stuff doesn’t get any attention. People aren’t interested in that stuff, so they’re not going to read it. I think real estate headlines gravitate towards these extremes, either saying it’s like the end of the world or saying it’s like the new boom. It’s usually not dead, and it’s usually not a boom, it’s usually in the middle, which is our life. Fear mongering is what gets people to retweet things and post on social media and all that stuff, but it’s really not reality. I try to stay away from that stuff because I think it’s damaging to the libido, and I think you can go down a rabbit hole. I really think you have to be careful about how much your calorie intake is on social media, be very cautious and news because it can really bring you down if you get caught up in it. Our markets are so nuanced, we should be more thoughtful in how we describe them. It’s never the end of the world, and it’s never the best thing ever. It’s usually in the middle. That’s sort of real estate too. It’s just everyday stuff. The market is pretty steady, but nobody’s going to write about that because it’s not sexy, right? I think that buyers and sellers making major financial decisions based on the information we provide is important—that we lead them with facts and analysis, not speculation. We need to give them really detailed information and be consistent and trustworthy. That’s why we’ve been around for 154 years, because that’s the ethos of this company. We try to do that imperfectly, but we try to stay on that path.
CL: As a successful woman in real estate, what is your advice for women in the industry looking to grow their careers and who aspire to reach heights like yours one day?
BF: I would say obviously you want to have role models. You want to have people that you look up to and admire. I think it’s super important to have good role models—not just any role models, but good ones—and to be confident in whatever your expertise is and not be afraid to make your voice heard. I see a lot of times that women in particular play not to lose versus play to win, while men always play to win. They’re always in it to win it, and women are tiptoeing around and just don’t want to lose. We have to play to win. I think it’s a fair fight, and we should be able to play to win. The area where I think women are just superior to men is in building relationships and navigating them. I would just encourage them to keep leaning into that—building trust and relationships and having friends from all walks of life. It’s very important.
That and the mentors. As I mentioned, have people you look up to, but also surround yourself with people who challenge you. You definitely don’t want to be with people who just agree with everything. You want to have people who challenge you. You want to really keep your mind open and lean into different ideas and have good mentors, and don’t exclude men. Obviously I had a lot of mentors who are also men. People are people first, and so have mentors of all types.
If you do want to get into real estate, know that resilience is numero uno, because it’s very demanding, you don’t always see results and you get knocked down a lot. It’s like romance—you’re going to get a lot of heartbreak, but you have to be able to get out of bed and get dressed and carry on with the day. You have to be resilient and persistent, to keep fighting and showing up, because once you can do that, then you can really be successful in it.
The last thing I would say about that is just be who you are—stay authentic to who you are as a person. Don’t try to change or copy somebody else or be you. If you speak a special language, use that to your benefit. If you’re in a book club, if you like a certain sport, if you knit, if you play chess, lean into the things that you love because that will connect with people organically, and they’re going to want to work with you because of that.
CL: What does being named a 2026 Real Estate Newsmaker mean to you?
BF: I have to say that I share this with everybody on my team and all the agents, because we do this work together. It’s a team sport—a lot of the decisions we make, it’s not me, it’s the team that makes them. We talk about everything and make decisions together. I listen to all the voices.
I’m super honored. I think it’s such a privilege to be able to do what I do. I feel fortunate that I’m able to speak up and say things, and I have the boundaries to do that. I’m not muted, I’m not prohibited. I don’t have to worry about my stock price going down if I tell the truth. I like that. This recognition, I think, brings attention to these important conversations. It makes me really proud to be a part of something that’s special.
Check out RISMedia’s 2026 Real Estate Newsmakers here.
RISMedia’s 2026 Newsmakers is sponsored by:
